Greenhouse gas emissions from municipal wastewater treatment facilities in China from 2006 to 2019.

Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) alleviate water pollution but also induce resource consumption and environmental impacts especially greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Mitigating GHG emissions of WWTPs can contribute to achieving carbon neutrality in China. But there is still a lack of a high-resolution and time-series GHG emission inventories of WWTPs in China. In this study, we construct a firm-level emission inventory of WWTPs for CH4, N2O and CO2 emissions from different wastewater treatment processes, energy consumption and effluent discharge for the time-period from 2006 to 2019. We aim to develop a transparent, verifiable and comparable WWTP GHG emission inventory to support GHG mitigation of WWTPs in China.

Assessing the impact of green nudges on ozone concentration: Evidence from China's night refueling policy.

Ozone (O3) pollution poses health risks and premature mortality, and gas stations are one of the largest sources of urban volatile organic compounds (VOCs, the main precursor to O3). This paper investigates whether the government's call for night refueling, which can be regarded as a green nudge, can guide changes in consumer behavior and consequently improve environmental quality. Using a difference-in-differences (DID) estimation and weekly monitoring site air quality panel data, we analyze the effect of the Night Refueling Preferential Policy on O3 concentrations. We find that the policy can reduce O3 concentrations by 10% by encouraging consumers to refuel at night. The reduction in O3 has brought great benefits to human health, leading to a 4-5‰ reduction in non-accidental mortality and a 6-8‰ reduction in cardiovascular mortality in Jiangsu province. The economic benefits of this policy would be approximately 62-189 billion Chinese Yuan (CNY) if it were implemented nationwide. The findings of this study suggest that the government can influence consumer behavior to promote environmental quality.

Designing and implementing pollutant emissions trading systems in China: A twelve-year reflection.

Over the past few decades, the pollutant emissions trading policies in China have undergone significant innovation and exploration. It is considered as a market-based approach that became integrated with command-and-control mechanisms such as total emissions control or pollution permits. This study is the first to provide systematic, reflective thinking that tracks the regional initiatives of pollutant emissions trading systems in China. In this article, we divided China's emissions trading practices into three stages and conducted a comparative qualitative analysis of the country's eleven provincial emissions trading pilots. We found that provincial pilots are highly diverse and complex regarding the pollutants that can be traded, the industrial sectors involved, the design of trading administration and processes, and the implementation of trading practices such as allowance, pricing and platforms. We also identified four main challenges: legislation setup, monitoring and verification, administrative interference, and the technical quantification of pollutant hotspots. We conclude the article by providing policy implications so that emissions trading policies can be integrated with the newly developed pollution permitting system.

The adoption of sustainable practices: A supplier's perspective.

Suppliers' adoption of sustainable practices plays a critical role for global companies to improve environmental performance. Based on the absorptive capacity theory, this study empirically explores how suppliers' knowledge bases and power relationships influence their adoption of sustainability practices. A longitudinal case study with eight suppliers has been conducted. We find that the adoption of leading sustainable practices requires a supplier's good knowledge base whereas a supplier can adopt imitating and toddling sustainable practices even if it has a limited knowledge base. Both the power of internal sustainability teams and external buyers enhance the effects of suppliers' knowledge bases on the adoption of sustainable practices. Suppliers choose the strategy used in adopting sustainable practices according to the configuration of internal and external power. The results enhance the current understandings of the mechanisms through which knowledge bases and power relationships affect the adoption of sustainable practices. The findings can also help global companies improve the effectiveness of their supplier development efforts and enhance the environmental performance of supply chains.

Introducing nonpoint source transferable quotas in nitrogen trading: The effects of transaction costs and uncertainty.

Transaction costs and uncertainty are considered to be significant obstacles in the emissions trading market, especially for including nonpoint source in water quality trading. This study develops a nonlinear programming model to simulate how uncertainty and transaction costs affect the performance of point/nonpoint source (PS/NPS) water quality trading in the Lake Tai watershed, China. The results demonstrate that PS/NPS water quality trading is a highly cost-effective instrument for emissions abatement in the Lake Tai watershed, which can save 89.33% on pollution abatement costs compared to trading only between nonpoint sources. However, uncertainty can significantly reduce the cost-effectiveness by reducing trading volume. In addition, transaction costs from bargaining and decision making raise total pollution abatement costs directly and cause the offset system to deviate from the optimal state. While proper investment in monitoring and measuring of nonpoint emissions can decrease uncertainty and save on the total abatement costs. Finally, we show that the dispersed ownership of China's farmland will bring high uncertainty and transaction costs into the PS/NPS offset system, even if the pollution abatement cost is lower than for point sources.

[Transfection of the exogenous PTEN-induced growth inhibition of the highly metastatic mucoepidermoid carcinoma cell line M3SP2 in vitro].

OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effects of the exogenous phosphatase and tensin homology deleted on chromosome 10 (PTEN) gene on in vitro growth of the highly metastatic mucoepidemoid carcinoma cell line M3SP2. METHODS: The growth of the exogenous PTEN transfected mucoepidemoid carcinoma cells M3SP2-PTEN gene was studied by analyzing cell growth curves, mitosis index and clone formation efficiency and compared with its parental cell line M3SP2 and the vector pBabepuro-transfected cell line M3SP2-pBp. RESULTS: The doubling time (h) of M3SP2, M3SP2-pBp and M3SP2-PTEN were 24.50, 24.76 and 31.74; the mitosis index (@1000) were 53.0 +/- 6.20, 49.0 +/- 5.24 and 16.2 +/- 3.2; the clone formation efficiency (%) were 37.37, 35.01 and 10.40, respectively. The M3SP2-PTEN cells also revealed 57.05%-71.46% inhibition of growth from day 3 to 7 and 65%-72% inhibition of clone formation compared with the parental cells. CONCLUSION: These data provide evidence that the exogenous wild-type PTEN have remarkably inhibitory effects on in vitro proliferation of the highly metastatic mucoepidermoid carcinoma cell line M3SP2.